The incredible story of how Wing Commander Ken Gatward, a RAF pilot, flew down the Champs-Elysees to drop a French flag over Nazi-occupied Paris has emerged after his medals were put up for sale. (www.dailymail.co.uk) More...

The medals and other items belong on public display in a museum or WWII monument. I hope whoever buys them does the right thing and loans them permanently to a public institution so the items can be properly preserved and displayed, so future generations know about what this man did.

I find it difficult to keep my language within the permitted ranges while commenting on this heroic feat by RAF Wing Commander Ken Gatward. Why does someone like this man have to die almost 30 years ago and then lately his widow too to have his unbelievable moral boosting action at the hight of WWII to be made public? How is it possible for a family not to be proud of this man and his legacy and sell off all his medals and trophies? To use the language expected by the moderators, I am "amazed and shocked". It would be a great coup for the French Government to be aware of this sale within the next few days and buy everything and then keep it all in an aeronautical (or other) museeum. Looking at his flight log for a single engine plane, it seems quite obvious that W.C. Gatward was flying a Bristol Beaufighter and not the two engine fighter bomber that is shown on the cartoons.

Sorry to sound like a bickering female, but if you read the article in the Daily Mail online, they specify that the pilot was flying a Bristol Beaufighter. As for there "may have been" a section for multiple engine time, I seriously doubt that Mr. Gatward reached the rank of Wing Commander and would choose the wrong log page to enter his mission.

My apologies for having been a pest. I had to look the plane up in Google to get it through my stubborn brain that it was a twin engine bomber. That what happens everytime I forget to use my grey cells before writing or saying something.

Heroic and daring indeed. The drop could have flopped some had the flag not snagged the prominent structure though it was hard to miss at such a low altitude where he apparently also ingested a bird into the starboard oil cooler according to the log entry. Lucky also for him that he was not shot down later and captured by the Nazis whence he would likely have been singled out for public execution for the sake of Nazi propaganda. I'm reminded of the story about an American commercial pilot some years ago who when queried by German Air Traffic Control if he was familiar with a particular city and its airport whereupon he replied that he was very familiar having flown over it several times during WWII under less friendly circumstances which brought a "moment of silence" from the German controller.